How Confusion & Lack Of Clarity In Copyright Law Make Reviewing Poems Difficult

from the can't-quote-this dept

techinabox alerts us to a short NY Times piece by David Orr, in which he notes yet another problem with copyright law, in that publishers are afraid to publish reviews of poems that actually dare to quote the poem, because it might be considered copyright infringement. At issue is that it's not clear what would be considered fair use in quoting a poem -- especially a short one. There are different theories about what's okay, but those theories don't seem to fit well with certain poems. Orr gives an example of a one line poem, and notes that quoting just 5% (a standard some suggest) would mean quoting 2 letters. As Orr notes the whole thing is an "incomprehensible system," and most publishers won't touch anything that might be interpreted as infringing, because they just don't want the headache of a legal battle.

Of course, quoting for the purpose of reviews should be fair use. The US Copyright Office itself uses:

"quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment;"

as an example of what qualifies for fair use. But, tragically, the "excerpts" part of that standard is unfortunately vague, and it limits what people can do.

One can only hope that copyidiots that firmly believe in their "rights" to not allow others to copy or distribute their works get what is coming to them and that is being ostracised by the rest of society.

Every joint, website or web-platform should just outright forbid standard copyright material that don't use a liberal license to be shown, every single one of those places should just force people to use CC Commons just to cover their asses from future litigation threats.

Did people noticed that in some countries Youtube now has a license feature that lets you search for CC Common works?

This also points to the need of a central database of sorts to say who owns what and what is copyrighted and not.

That central database should be paid for by copyright owners that should have to renew their copyrights every 10 years to get full protections of the law. The price of that should be based on a fixed minimum and a dynamic price based on earnings and whichever is higher should be charged.

Could NinjaVideos use the same defense, I don't know but would be interesting to see where that leads, it surely will open up a very interesting debate since politicians will need to balanced their freedoms against copyright law.

Reminds me of the human cannonball case. A news program broadcast 15 seconds of Zacchini's act to comment on it (classic fair use), but the Supreme Court denied the defense because the 15 seconds constituted too much of his act. Talk about overextending intellectual property to prop up a business model.

Would a form signed by the client saying that he owns the copyright suffice to dispel any doubts that the printing establishment did everything it could to fallow the law?

Of course copytards would never agree with that, but what the law says in America?

If copytards really want everybody to enforce their laughable laws they will need to give people some tools to do so, is there a place where people can do a search to find out if some material is infringing or not?

Establishments now need to consider everything copyrighted and not print anything how much money is not circulating in the economy because of that, and according to a few very dishonest people that is enough to claim irreparable harm to the whole of the economy like the numbers from the MPAA.

Poets Are Free To Fix This

Poets could simply make themselves available to reviewers and provide permission (in writing, natch) for any quotations. Poets who decline to do so, get to suffer continued obscurity. Alas, this policy still leaves academic reviewers, who wish to be comprehensive, in difficulty. There exist talented poets who are unable to give permission due to them being dead. How many poets are gong to mention giving permission to reviewers in their will?

Reviews are generally welcome

As a person who writes an excessive number of poems which I generally publish for free, I appreciate genuine reactions.

Now if I published a book of poems, I would consider it perfectly fine for one poem to be quoted in full as a fair use in a review, or a few lines of up to three works. Any less than that, and there is no context. Any more, well they are republishing my works and I would expect payment for it. But I would rather be reviewed than ignored.

It is a bit like those song lyric websites - they are effectively republishing copyright works but it generally benefits the author.

Compare this with a film review that tells the plot of the film - now that is a very significant violation.

Re: Techdirt = copyright & patent whining?

I know! I've been reading this site for YEARS waiting for news about Justin Bieber and Ontario politics, but they just keep talking about these weird economic and legal topics. If only there were other news sources on the internet!

Re: Re:

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Forcing it on you? You're not forced to comment - you choose to. Just like somebody who chooses to embed a video they find on YouTube. Before you commented - or for that matter, before you read anything on the site - did you check to make sure Techdirt isn't full of infringing material? Because if it is, then you're liable. So are you sure? Did you check?

Oh wait... he's been dead for 40 years. Still, present copyright laws will encourage him to continue to produce for at least another 30 years. Meantime, we're not allowed to quote him, except for fair-use excerpts.

I'm sure you can see the man's cleverness and wit from this excerpt. Enjoy!

P.S. Here's an excerpt from another Ogden Nash poem:

""

Sorry, 5% of that one is less than one character. Let's see who can quote the entire poem first!

There's an opportunity in there...

I wonder how long it would take to publish a series of one line poems containing every grammatically correct and understandable sentence that could be used?

Or better yet, just a list of the most commonly used sentences about, say, I don't know...copyright protection? Then publish that collection as a volume of poetry, and send out cease & desist letters to anyone who dares publish and infringe on one of your works.

Re:

Point is even lawyers don't know 5% of all laws and have to do a lot of research for each case they have in court. So how are we the little people to know them all. What ever happened to keep it simple stupid? Like the 10 commandments!